


The Green Mill

by Delwin



Series: ...fluff, angsty fluff and caper fluff (unapologetic, straight up P/T) [6]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, angst for the sake of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delwin/pseuds/Delwin
Summary: ...fair warning: here there be (unredeemed) angst...
Relationships: Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Series: ...fluff, angsty fluff and caper fluff (unapologetic, straight up P/T) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/937647
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	The Green Mill

_Some moments last forever, but some flare out with love, love, love_ —The Mountain Goats

There are cracks in the sidewalk. They shouldn’t surprise him — he wrote the program — but somehow they still do. Cracks and depressions in which rainwater from the afternoon’s summer shower had collected into puddles. Ambiance. It had been meant to be ambiance. The neon green lights of the scripted marquee are reflected on the flat surface of the largest puddle: The Green Mill.  
  
It’s an earlier draft of the program. He’s not sure why he’d felt a compulsion to run it. He shouldn’t be running it — shouldn’t be running any program. The Captain has ordered extreme energy saving protocols, for all the good they’ll do. Tom — or whoever or whatever it is that he is — knows how this story is going to end.  
  
He suddenly feels bone-tired and needs to sit. He could go inside — Billie Holiday should be starting her set — but the effort seems beyond him. There’s a bus stop with a bench a few meters down the block and he stumbles over, collapsing onto the bench with his head in his hands.  
  
Fuck.  
  
The cold metal of the ring on his left hand rubs against the stubble that covers his face. Unwelcome, words echo through his memory: declarations of love, promises of forever. Even at the time those words had sounded almost too good to be true and far more than he could possibly deserve.  
  
Turns out they had been.   
  
A light drizzle starts to fall, surprisingly cold considering the ambient temperature. Ruefully scrubbing fingers through wet hair, Tom lifts his eyes to the flickering lights of the Ethiopian restaurant across the street. Further research had proven the restaurant an anachronism, non-existent until several decades after the prohibition-era setting Tom had been aiming for. He’d revised the program accordingly, restoring the original 1920’s glory of the neighborhood, but something about the gritty hodgepodge of the first draft had called to him tonight.  
  
There’s another feature of this version that had probably figured into his impulsive decision to run the program.  
  
He should walk away now, close down the program, buy back the extra second or two of unreal existence that he is wasting right now on holodeck energy.  
  
He voices a command to the computer.  
  
She appears before him with arms folded across her chest, shivering against the drizzle.  
  
“Rain? Really, Paris?”  
  
“No, not really. None of this is real.” His voice is flat.  
  
“Well, that’s true.” Shrugging, she sits down beside him, pulling a knee up into her chest. That mannerism alone is almost enough to undo him. “So, did you do it? Did you propose?”  
  
And this is why this was an egregiously bad idea: why in the name of all hells would he want to sit here and explain to a hologram all too accurately resembling his dead wife, that, yes, he proposed and, yes, they had been married but that now she’s dead and really she was never alive — or at least alive and herself — and, by the way, neither is he?  
  
He does it anyway, crashing through the full story.   
  
The hologram listens with equanimity. “So why are you — why are we — here?”  
  
Tom could claim he doesn’t know except he does. And what’s the point of dishonesty? “I guess I needed...wanted...”  
  
“To know what she’d tell you to do now?”  
  
That was, after all, the reason for this feature of the draft program: a way to build the perfect surprise for someone who hated surprises.  
  
Tom nods, feeling nothing but defeat.  
  
“She’d want you to mourn and then move on. To make the most of the life you have left, even if it is likely to be brief.”  
  
“Even if that life isn’t and never was real?”  
  
The hologram shrugs again, as unimpressed as B’Elanna ever was with his bouts of self-pity. “She’d say it only matters if it’s real to you.”  
  
“What if I don’t want it to be real?”  
  
She cocks her head, unsurprised. “Then she’d say to at least turn off this program and stop wasting energy.”  
  
For the first time, Tom meets the hologram’s eyes. The doors to the Green Mill swing open as a couple dashes squealing through the rain to a waiting cab. Strains of Holliday’s “All or Nothing at All” escape into the night.

After a beat, Tom nods and stands, still holding the eye contact with his companion.  
  
One corner of her mouth lifts into a sad smile. “Good-bye, Tom.”  
  


Eyes burning, he pushes past the block in his throat: “Computer, end program.”  
  
And the fantasy around him blinks out of existence.

.

.

.

_We’ll take a drive up Michigan Avenue in a vintage Duesenberg, hobnob with the stars of the silver screen, dance the Charleston at a genuine speakeasy called the Green Mill_ — duplicate Tom Paris, “Course: Oblivion”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This has no real excuse for its existence other than the fact that I found the opening paragraphs in an old drafts folder and, apparently, finishing abandoned drafts is as close as I‘m getting to writing these days... 
> 
> Also I used to live down the street from the Green Mill, and I miss my old neighborhood.
> 
> Many, many thanks to Photogirl1890 as always for her encouragement and eagle eye.


End file.
